A friend of mine sent me this diagram from GNU. He had closed the game and so I have no idea what the ID of the position was.

[IMG][/IMG]

the only legal throw was to hit on the 23, but neither of us have heard of a rule that says you have to use the biggest dice?

Any help appreciated.

If you can only play one of your two numbers, you must play the larger one.

Oh. Never knew that. Easy answer, thanks.

This is interesting. I never considered this before. Is there a specific reason the rule Mr. Robertie stated is as such?

No. Games are a collection of mostly arbitrary rules. If the collection works, you have a good game. If not, you don't.

You could have a game that was just like backgammon except the rule was that if you could only play one of your two numbers, you had to play the smaller one. That would work and it wouldn't be much different from the game we know. You could also have a third variation that allowed the player to make the choice, and a fourth variation that allowed his opponent to make the choice! Since the sitiation hardly ever arises, all four of these variations would play pretty much the same.

As long as both players understand what the rule is, you don't have a problem.